Confession: I sent my Save The Dates out way. way. waaaaaay too early. After my recent posting about the design of our pretty STDs, I had several requests to tell the story of the over-eager bride who sent out her Save The Dates close to a year before the wedding.
See, I told you, tre early. Hellooooo, psycho-bride! But in my defense....Well, no, no, I have no defense, really. The long story short is that I decided very early on what they were going to look like and had my friend make them for me back in April. I finally got my grubby little paws on them in June. I'm a teacher and I was on summer vacation, which basically means I had a lot of free time and a serious urge to cross wedding tasks of my gigantic to-do list.
When I went on the Knot, the timeline for sending out Save The Dates was something like 12-6 months in advance. Great, I thought, I'm 11 months out (really, it was closer to 12 but it was at least under the 1-year mark.) So I did up my little Word insert with our wedding website information, stuffed and addressed them all and sent them on their merry way.
Unfortunately, what the Knot did knot (haha!) state was why it is important to have your guest list completely finalized before sending out the Save The Dates. THIS, my dear ladies, is why I strongly recommend waiting until at least the 7 or 8-month mark to send out Save The Dates. Had I waited, I'm willing to bet I could have gotten our invite list down to at least 200 people, instead of the monstrous 230 it is now. But no, thanks to my over-eager, over-ambitious self, I am stuck with my guest list as is. Well, technically I could add people to it but we all know that's SO not what any bride wants!
So there you have it, my sad tale of how jumping the gun can lead to shooting oneself in the foot. Whoops! Seriously, girlfriends, make sure your guest list is super-set before you send them out. Or at least don't send them to people who are even remotely questionable (yup, didn't do that either, sent every last one out to every person on our damn guest list.) Oh well, live and learn, I suppose, but I do hope someone learns from my mistakes. So take my advice, no matter how beautiful your STD's are, no matter how anxious you are to get 'em out there and proclaim to the world that you are getting married, WAIT. Wait until you're certain of the guest list, wait until you know who you want to send them to and then wait another month (Unless you're planning a destination wedding. Then by all means, send 'em as early as you want!)
Anyone else got a tale of early bird bridal psycho-ness?
Soooo funny, we did the same thing! Ours went our in early August for our June wedding...and now there's a couple co-workers getting on my nerves that I wish I hadn't sent STDs to!
ReplyDeleteGood warning. I won a giveaway to have mine printed for free so I am going to have them really, really early. This story will remind me to hang on to them until 7-8 months out though!
ReplyDeleteI just thought last week (when I realized that I'm already over budget) how lucky I was that I hadn't sent out our save the dates yet so I can trim off the guest list if need be. On the same note though, we're a quasi-destination wedding and a little over 6 months out and I still haven't sent them out, my goal is to get them in the mail next week!
ReplyDeleteI sent ours out in July for our April wedding...like what, 10 months ahead? Though I did take into consideration the people I may need to cut and didn't send them one but my lovely fiance is so fickle about his friends. He has about 2 or 3 friends for sure that I sent them to that he keeps going back and forth on whether or not he wants to invite them! UGH! Smart post though - so true!
ReplyDeleteHAHA, I am tempted to send them early, but like you mentioned we're working on making that list a little shorter, so I'll be waiting until 6-8 months out.
ReplyDeleteomg. same thing. well - ACTUALLY - more crazy. We had our save-the-dates printed up, addressed, and stamped ready to go BEFORE we were engaged :-) hehehe...yea. you live and learn. Anyway...we sent them the day after we were officially engaged. 11 months in advance.
ReplyDeleteGranted, it's a destination wedding for most, so we thought that we would be doing these loved ones a favor by sending them out so early. And in most circumstances, we were correct. Except, we didn't exactly whittle our guest list down as much as we could have. Whoops.